Provisioning platforms are known which allow a systems administrator to select, configure, and push a set of software to new machines on a network. It is a shortcoming in existing provisioning platforms that the systems administrator may have to make manual selections and perform other tasks manually in order to carry out that installation process. In the case of software provisioning to sets of machines which use virtual storage rather than installed local hard disks, the installation difficulties can include the fact that the provisioning server may not be configured to be aware of the assigned location of a possible virtual disk installation. The provisioning server may also not be aware or have the configuration flexibility to generate a distribution which incorporates directory or other configurations to permit an operating system or other installation to operate correctly in machines having no local hard disks and which rely upon virtualized storage. Similar issues can occur in the case of diskless client systems which rely upon network-backed storage.
It may be desirable to provide methods and systems for provisioning machines having virtual storage resources, in which operating system and other distributions can be reliably made to machines lacking permanent local hard disk or other storage.